The Emotional Bank Account
Whether you are in a good or bad relationship, it is important to know about the emotional bank account. I ask you, in your current relationship are you making deposits or withdrawals? Healthier relationships tend to have more of a positive balance. What are deposits into the bank account? A deposit could be simply avoiding your cell phone or an incoming call and focusing on being with your...Learn More
My Fondest Counseling Memory
28 years as a counselor has had its ups and downs. There were scary times at the Mental Health Urgent Care when people who were psychotic got unruly. How can you convince somebody who feels you are in on the government plot against them that you are there to help? Somehow, I managed to do so. Though, I wondered this morning what was my fondest memory. I’ve had a lot of incredible memories. In...Learn More
Rough Week
Last September my Step Father passed away. Since I was 4 years old his guidance was amazing. I just heard the news that my birth father was placed in a nursing home and his mind and body are slipping. Both in their 90s, back deep in my mind, I always figured that my fathers would always be around. One down, prepare for number two. Let’s add on catching the flu. To be honest I don’t know what...Learn More
How Do We Heal?
How do we heal? What an interesting topic. Do you know? I have devoted my life to showing people how to, in the way I was trained to do so in school, but is that the only way? If you are looking for treatment the first question to ask a potential therapist is what is their theory on healing. Healing. Do people really heal? A coworker asked me that the first week I was working at a luxury...Learn More
Boosting Your Immunity
After recently traveling and being with a lot of people, it was a different experience from my familiar distancing, masking up, and isolating. For me, like many, the Covid experience was a lot of isolating and the social thing was an adjustment. It seems that the reports I was hearing was being around others was life-threatening, but after getting Covid and now having the antibodies has...Learn More
Breaking an Addiction
Beyond all the theoretical approaches, the social support networks, the medication, the paraprofessionals, friends, and family, the thing that will get you through addiction is your determination. Psychologists explain addiction as a hard-wired pattern that is hard to break. When a stimulus happens, for example the desire to use, it is hard-wired to respond by using. Any attempt to stop this...Learn More
Why Can’t I Just Fix This On My Own?
The answer to the question above is you can, given the know-how. When I graduated from High School, I was depressed, anxious, and didn’t know a thing about life. I did pretty well in school, with what was taught there, but nobody taught me about what was really important – how to keep myself emotionally stable. At that time, my family didn’t deal with my emotions. If you acted out you were...Learn More
Kissing the Boo Boo – Self Help
The aim of this organization is to teach people the skills to help themselves. At Basic Steps Mental Health, we understand that we cannot fix anybody, that that isn’t our job, the real fixing comes from each person. However, without the proper tools and mindset, any tools learned will fail. In the book “Self Helping” by myself, I step a person through many tools that help us on four levels:...Learn More
Self Help Tool | Free-Form Writing
Do people heal? This question was asked of me when I started working at a luxury treatment facility in Malibu. The nighttime supervisor only saw warehousing of clients and no recovery up to that point. My reply was, “Just watch.” Unfortunately, my clients were healing too quickly and this didn’t fit my boss’s treatment philosophy, so I was let go. I guess it is a bad business model to...Learn More